jeez this is heavy stuff. So is arguing for a physicality of consciousness and is arguing for the “wispy”-ness of consciousness.

I would have expected this to be COMPLETELY opposite than this. I think I need stronger coffee to join into this one.

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[not sure if wispy is the best word but i think it captures the fragility and immediacy]

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Oh I didn’t see any religious or superstitious stuff here. You guys and I are all more or less on the same page with this kind of stuff. It’s the “what’s the ‘is’ here”?

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Well, what do you define as “free will”? Maybe no one else here believes in your idea of what free will would be too?

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Well, a choice is a constradiction of ‘free’ once a choice is made, yes. But prior to that choice, that “will being asserted”, there’s a realm of uncertainty and choice. That’s the realm where there’s freedom, prior to the choice and the will being asserted.

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“free will” requires time to operate in. It’s actually terrible that they’re together as a single concept because it’s more of a process than anything.

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As someone who used to suffer terribly from “analysis paralysis”, there’s *too much* freedom in free will.

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There are constraints upon freedoms, sure. What level of free are you looking for? Omnipotent?

If I take a left step with my left foot, once I put the foot on the ground (I made the choice and executed that choice), can I say while the foot hits the ground, “My free will places the right foot there instead”?

You can’t. You chose. Something happened after the choice.

But now that procedure is over, there are other choices to be made freely..

How free do you expect here?

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you want free will to include going super saiyan?

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Think levels of granularity. On the grain level of subatomic processes? Probably not much in he way of free will (unless you go the quantum in the microbules route, which some do]. In the chemical processes? Somewhat (as thought can modify levels in the body]. In the grammar of your language? [limited because we learn it so young]. How do do movements we learned young like walking? [some more choice but still very scripted].

But then you rise to higher levels of granularity. At some levels, we have free will.

Then you get to larger-than-self levels. What about the way society functions? Free will there pushes against larger systems at play, hence constraining freedom of will.

Go larger than societies and there’s even more constraints.

But at some levels of granularity, there’s free will.

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That part has truth to it the “post hoc” justification as to “why I did (past) what I did” explanation that occurs (after past).

There’s lag.

But you’re falling into a binary form of analysis paralysis. “If this, then that and if that, then the other thing and if the other thing, then there’s an unshakeable conclusion I am compelled to agree to”.

But that’s only one path down the reasoning maze you can go down.

Let’s say all of the other questions ARE so. Then we’re left with “Can I chose left or right?”

Why would that not be the level of choice if that is also the level at which one can consciously choose in?

The others are inaccessible. This one is. Why is it subject to the same conditions as the unconscious things?

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My computer is in front of me. I have access to keyboard and mouse and screen. This is my interface to the system.

There’s processed underneath I have much less direct influence over.

Because those systems are not as directly under my control, does this NECESSARILY mean that my keyboard and mouse choices are ALSO not under my control?

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I’m in typing mode so I’ll throw this out there too:

Systems. When does a car become a car?

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Keyboards don’t have it. The operators do..

It sounds like you’re taking a metaphor of computers and programming and applying them to human consciousness.

You’re taking something you understand and applying it to the more complex thing that you do not understand fully and asserting that it must be like the simpler thing that you do understand. Am I wrong?

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Pre-determined by biology and programmed are synonymous concepts though, are they not?

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Ok, you are takng an alien perspective. I like that. Now that the humans have decided “this is a car”, at which point in the makeup of a car is it a car?

Is it not “when it does car-like things?”

If I point an an engine, that is not a car. Wheels are not a car. Technically speaking, an object with the *potential* to do car-like things that just sits there rusting in a junkyard isn’t *really* a car because it’s not doing car-like things.

It’s only when doing car-like things that it’s a car.

You can define all the parts that help make up consciousness but none of those are the consciousness. It’s when a consciousness is doing consciousness-like things that it’s a consciousness.

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Of course. Humans are natural and we have constraints upon our systems thanks to the constraints placed there on nature.

Nature rules. But within nature’s rules, there’s free will within the humans of nature.

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All there is is human concepts for humans to use. Issues of identity are human concepts. Philosophical bedrock is a human concept. “to convince” is a human concept.

Concept is a human concept.

Language is ridiculous but it’s all we got to work with.

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Those concepts don’t count as valid because they’re just human concepts but THESE concepts over here are valid because they support my rhetoric”.

I’m actually fine with that process to a point but I’m laughing mostly because it’s the kind of thing I say too without noticing it.

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Perhaps. I consider objective to be “subjective consensus”. We’re limited to our own brains, hands and the tools and instruments we create.

Get enough people to agree something is objectively true and it’s objectively true, using the proof tools we ALSO created subjectively and came to a consensus of.

Turtles all the way down. But that’s how it is.

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Is this “car” a car? Objectively, it’s a car because subjective consensus says so. What doesn’t fall into that? It all does. But some more than others? Sure. Some things are so universal among humans and the tools we create that we can act “as if” they’re objectively so.

Same as for consciousness.

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If you assert that consciousness is an illusion, then any concepts that come FROM any consciousness at any point in human history is also an illusion.

To me the question is: Where do you draw the line and say, “Now we will consider these things objectively so, and those things subjectively so” – even if they’re all ultimately subjective?

I put consciousness in the category of objectively so. The fact that we can pick and poke at it doesn’t kill it. If we could emulate it on a computer one day it still wouldn’t kill it. It just means we know more about it.

Your experience as an individual may differ. Groups of people may differ. Large groups of people agreeing is what makes something objectively so.

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Who created the instruments to measure these things we refer to as objective?

The same people who collectively subjectively decided there was something worth measuring and made tools to fit the purpose.

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The aether is my favorite example of something objectively true. [although interestingly a variation of the aether concept *has* returned in some theoretical physics ’cause having a backdrop to work off of is pretty damned handy]